"Will you try to understand?"
I said nothing. The train whistle sounded distantly down the track. It sounded like a small, drawn-out cry. The room was utterly still.
"Will you try to understand?" she said again.
"No!" I craned my neck at her, jutting my jaw and letting the word rip out at her. I wanted to hurt her, as the wounded lover wants to hurt, to retaliate, to reject her thought of ever understanding, a renunciation of her entire person.
"You're not a child any longer, a little boy. I told you there were things you must understand about life and about people if you are ever to be happy. Things that are a part of life, and of people."
"Why?" I was the sassy boy, mocking her with the question; as if I or anyone could ever understand such a gross thing.
"Because if we love people we try to understand. Even when it's difficult We try to feel what they may be feeling, and think what they may be thinking. We try to know their pain." She was holding the slippers, her fingers absently stroking the toes. She was not aware that she was doing it; still it was a loathsome sight. She paused, then talked some more. "It's easy to pretend to an understanding, to run about giving sympathy, but unless it's realty, truly felt, it's wasted energy. I beg you --"
She did not entreat with her eyes, but gazed at the slippers in her hands with such caring, such devotion, such -- love. . . .
My fingers clenched at the bedspread, my arm shot out, pulling it away from the blanket, and I swept it to the floor.
"He's a dirty nigger!"
I shouted the words and though their sound died in the room their echo continued inside my head as I flung myself toward the door. "Nothing but a dirty nigger," I repeated. "And you're nothing but a nigger-lover!"
Jesse was standing in the doorway, blocking my passage. A little light glimmered in his dark eyes as he put his hands out to slow my onrush past him. I butted at him, trying to get by, but he kept me caged inside the room. I began flailing and kicking and batting at him. His arms came around my chest and he held me, lifting me from the floor. I saw Lady sitting on the chaise, saw Jesse's ransacked clothing yanked from the closet onto the floor, saw above me his dark chin with its dusting of talc, heard the growl in his throat,
"Easy, son, easy."
"Elthea's your wife!" I shouted, trying to free myself. I could feel his heart beating under my back.
"Let him go," Lady said, not rising from where she sat.
"Your wife!" I spat the words at him.
"Let him go!" Lady sprang from the chaise and crossed the room with one-two-three quick strides. Then, using the flat of the slipper, she slapped me once across the face. "You make me ashamed of you." She pushed her way past and went out.
"Your wife," I repeated dumbly as Jesse lowered me to the floor and made me stand by myself.
"No, son," he said as he bent to pick up the things from the floor, "Elthea's not my wife. She's my sister."
7
His sister -- not his wife, his sister!
And there it was, the truth revealed. And I lived with the dreadful knowledge, all my fears centered around that one dark secret, but I quickly saw that this was the core of the fruit, and that the flesh around it was rotten as well. There was much more to be discovered, and it came, one thing leading to another until I realized how incredible it all was. I ate of the tapioca and the scales fell from my eyes; I saw all.
It was just that taste, a dish of tapioca Ma served one night, that took me back to that time at the seashore, at the Manor House Inn, when the lady came in the great Minerva automobile with her friend and her maid and chauffeur, and I watched her walking by moonlight in the rose garden. She had been discovered then. She and Jesse: somehow Mr. Stevenson had come across,them in a compromising situation, had asked her to leave, and she, laughing, had gone. The roses might have shriveled, died for shame.
Seeing this, I saw more: the rides about town, Jesse in front, she in back, the speaking tube connecting them -- laughing. The drawn shades, they behind them -- laughing.
Jesse following Elthea up, but not as far as the attic where she slept, but only to the bedroom where she slept -- laughing.
"You make me ashamed of you. . . ."
Those were Lady's last words to me for a long time, and still they rang in my head, echoing and re-echoing. But how ashamed was I for her! Lady Harleigh, Jesse Griffin -- linked; coupled. How could she, how could they? No wonder she pleaded for understanding. No wonder that on the threshold of the hereafter he trembled in fear of judgment. God would judge them, but until He got his chance, I would do. I judged them, damned them, hated them, plotted against them. He who had touched, had defiled her, would live in eternal hell of my own imagining. Die, I thought, die quick, and let her live alone in the greatest of loneliness. Let her live with the ghost of Edward Harleigh, whose honorable name she had dragged down, whose memory she had betrayed. How clever she was, how cunning her duplicity, the pose of devoted widow, mourner. Nothing could ever be so base as for years to have continued the deception. Here on the Green where she had lived among decent people, let them discover her ignominy, let her be damned from the pulpit, let her wear sackcloth and ashes, let her be driven from her home, from the town, as Elsie Thatcher had been. Let her be stoned on the steps of First Church, let her fall, regenerate but unforgiven. Let him be sent back to his island, to the fisher folk, black men, black, different, nigger. No wonder she wore that old back-porch sweater of his so often. She'd loved it; it had his smell in it.
Nigger.
Wretched, I sat in undiminished anger at the worktable in the sleeping porch, staring across the Green and praying for a bolt of lightning to strike the house, to see the finger of God point, and destroy all three. I resolved I would tell, that I would run into church on Sunday and announce it to the congregation: she has sinned, she has fornicated, with a nigger! When Lew or Harry or someone else came in, jarring me into reality again, I would retreat to the cellar, or to Hubbard's woods -- anywhere to get away from the mortifying knowledge I had gained. "Original sin?" This, in the brick house across the way, was more original than any, and I would expose it in all its shamefulness.
But before I could, it was accomplished otherwise, and though I was blamed, and would have been equal to the blame, it was not of my doing. And it was the greatest injury to my friend -- for though I didn't know it, or care, Lady was still my friend -- that she thought me responsible.
School let out, and in one of her confidential sessions Ma told me that the following September I would be allowed to go away to school, an event I regarded with mixed emotions, but since she was to manage the tuition out of her own pocketbook I went willingly enough to make the obligatory visit and meet the faculty and teachers. Blankenschip School was up on the north New England coast and it was a long bus ride to and from the school.
When I returned, it was just before the storm of scandal broke over Lady's head. If I had looked for a change across the Green, some reading of the emotional barometer forecasting weather to come, there was none. Jesse was up and around again, and I would see him as he came out to take in the mail, stopping for a word with Mr. Marachek. And it was our Czechoslovakian postman-friend who, unwittingly, now performed the service which revealed to everyone the secret I alone had known. Gossip in small towns often starts over the wash lines, wipes its feet at the back door, and soon is welcomed in the parlor, and so it often was in our small town. But in this instance the gossip came by way of the front door, in the mailbox. For from door to door went Mr. Marachek, to all the important houses, with letters "from a friend," disclosing the information that Adelaide Harleigh née Strasser, widow of Edward, was living in sin with her houseman, with -- as I had so often reiterated to myself -- a nigger.
One letter came to our house; I saw it; even recognized the stationery, a cheap variety that could be found on the counter of the Gift and Novelty Shoppe, and I secretly rejoiced that Miss Jocelyn-Marie's untidy typing was disseminating such gossip to al
l quarters and strata of local society.
First the letters, then the talk, then a full-blown scandal. Notorious was the word! People took to walking on the Green, stopping in groups to peer over at the brick house, or to driving by. It was a topic of prime importance on the 5:10 trolley car, and following court sessions and Town Meeting. The convenings of the congregations after church were no different at the Protestant bastion from those of the Episcopal or the Catholic. There was as much talk at the drugstore as at the A. & P.; and Spouse's expression at the meat counter was as vindictive as PJ.'s was at the soda fountain. The gang at the firehouse explored the situation in all its shabby details, as did the boys on the platform of the seed store, while Mr. Phelps at the freight depot went across to talk it over with the cappers at Rose Rock.
There were nasty doings. As testimony of what Northern gentlemen thought of ladies who had truck with gentlemen of color, who as everyone knew were eaters of watermelon, a dozen of these were smashed on Lady's lawn, their juicy guts and seeds strewn as far as the doorstep. The mess cleaned up, a sign appeared, its whitewashed scrawl the same words I had used -- "NIGGER-LOVER." Then someone remembered about Blue Ferguson and Lilah Pierson, and comparisons, odious but inevitable, were drawn. But Blue Ferguson was a saint next to Jesse Griffin, Mrs. Pierson no more than a misguided creature, while Lady Harleigh . . .
I thought the sinners justly punished. It was as Jesse would have vowed, right and fitting. Let them skulk out of town, hiding their faces, like thieves in the night. For, as the whole town knew, the mistress of the brick house on the Green was no better than the girls at River House, or the Knobb Street Marinis, who did it on the platform of the freight station at night and who took roller-coaster rides at Holiday Lake backward to get rid of the baby. I gloated; how I gloated! Miss Jocelyn-Marie's poison-typewriter letters had accomplished what I could not.
But if any of the participants in the affair were shamed, none showed it. During the following weeks, their faces were everywhere in evidence as Jesse drove Lady about: at the post office, the A. & P., the Rose Rock soda-pop works for her monthly case of pale dry ginger ale, and at the freight station to send off a package. Never did she create embarrassment by starting a conversation, but in each instance stated her wishes clearly and with candor, saw them carried out, and departed, head held high. Jesse, tough nut to crack, seemed to have rallied, and on his own part showed as much effrontery -- or bravado, call it what you will -- as did his mistress. Between the country-clubbers and the boys at the Noble Patriot, no opportunity was missed to plumb the humorous possibilities inherent in this hitherto harmless term. "What's the difference between a mister and a mistress?" "A mattress," and so on.
Then, horror of horrors, it was the sanctum sanctorum itself that was invaded, the house of Porter J. Sprague and Spouse. The Daughters of the Pilgrims were granted unscheduled admission to the premises, the house having been cleaned, dusted, and aired the week before. Inasmuch as Spouse had already provided the ladies their once-annual entrance at Washington's Birthday, clearly this connoted emergency measures of the sternest order. Ostensibly a meeting to vote on funds for the Town Farm, everyone knew it was called to blackball the name of The Person who had brought shame upon the organization, she who in any case never appeared at such functions. Except in this case she did, and even I, reveling in her disgrace, admired her courage in facing that doughty gathering. The ladies had been requested to bring foodstuffs for the indigents at the Farm, and the meeting had already been called to order when up drove the Packard to deposit at the curb Lady Harleigh, carrying several cake-boxes. The boys rushed to the doors of the firehouse, the loiterers at the Noble Patriot pushed out onto the walk, and the barbershop emptied as up the walk she went, wearing a new hat, not waiting for Mrs. de Sales-Sprague's door to be answered, but ringing and then entering.
What happened next was food for thought at every supper table in town. The Person deposited her boxes with the rest of the provender inside the door, and assumed an empty seat at the rear of Mrs. de Sales-Sprague's parlor. Whereupon the hostess interrupted her speech -- whose contents had been carefully rehearsed, and dealt with the taint of immorality upon the children of the village -- announcing that The Person who had just sat down was unwelcome, and the meeting would stand adjourned until The Person departed the premises; would someone second the motion? Someone did, and all was silence, heads turned, eyes staring, until The Person slipped on her gloves, which she had removed, directed her attention to the hostess, saying that she would consider it a kindness if her name might be struck from the rolls of the Pilgrim Club of Pequot Landing, founded 1898, and, as requested, vacated the premises.
Far from my original fervent prayer that just such disgrace should be visited upon her, I now was of two minds, still gleeful that she was getting her comeuppance at last, but proud that she wasn't hiding and afraid to show her face. Around the Green, war had broken out between the two factions: those for and those against. Colonel Blatchley, who might have been a staunch supporter, had left for London that spring to see the coronation of George VI. Ruthie Sparrow led the "against"s, and was full of I-knew-it-all-the-times and I-always-thought-there-was-something-funny-going-on-over-theres. Oddly, it was Gert Flagler who led the "for"s, stating in her loudest tones that what people chose to do was their own damn business and she wished other people would mind theirs. It was not known what Miss Berry thought, for she kept her own counsel.
Thus the vox populi of Pequot Landing.
8
During the following year, the scandal more or less ran its course -- by then Porter Sprague was stirring up the America Firsters -- and while people still talked about it, everything that was to be said had been said, every opinion ventured, every good (read evil) gained. In the end Lady was considered no more than a rich person with eccentric proclivities. And so matters remained for some time. For my own part, I was mortified for her, and for Jesse as well. The slow realization grew in me that though I had kept the secret and felt betrayed, it was nothing to my own betrayal of the years of kindness I had received across the Green.
Then, who reappeared on the scene but Rabbit and Dora's mother, Helen Zelinski. She got off the streetcar one day, as nice as you please, spoke a few words with me from the roadway, and then went across the Green to Lady's house. We had heard that she had been released from Meadowland, and was working as a waitress at a place called the Red Fox Café -- up on the outskirts of Hartford -- which you passed on the trolley line. If my thoughts had been kind toward Helen Zelinski when she went in, they were of a different nature when she came out. For she reappeared with Rabbit and Dora, a nice little family group, stopping to chat with Lady on her stoop while Jesse brought the car out, and in they got and off they went. I hated Rabbit all over again, hated Dora, and most of all hated Helen Zelinski. There they were, all three, in those precincts where I had once held center stage, and where I could no longer go. I could picture them sitting around the kitchen table, having cake and ice cream, and laughing, and talking -- about me, undoubtedly. I could hear them -- "Poor boy, he couldn't understand. He doesn't know what he's missing. But he'll find out. I'll bet he just feels terrible." I did, and I knew, too, what I was missing. The visits became more frequent, and on Saturdays I'd see Rabbit over there doing the chores that Jesse had been forbidden. Mrs. Zelinski, too, in bandana and apron, helping Elthea around the house and yard. One day they would be out fertilizing the gardens, the next time shining the windows, the next doing a full spring cleaning. Now there were six of them over there, and over here, two: me and the Green-Eyed Monster, and I couldn't tell whom I hated more, them or myself.
I knew that Ma knew that something was amiss, for how could she help it? Being Ma, she said nothing, but I could tell she was watching for a sign, waiting for me to spill everything. But I wouldn't, couldn't. How could I tell anyone the words I'd said about Jesse, and what Lady had said to me? Ma aside, it was Aggie who realized first what had made me silent and mean for s
o long, that somehow I had known. She kept at me until I admitted that I had called Jesse a name -- I would not say which name -- and she pleaded with me to make it right, but I could not. Nothing could send me up the walk to that front door, or even to the back one. I would hang around the Elm, drawing day by day nearer to the far pavement, thinking that in their comings and goings I would receive some kind of recognition that would be the signal for a rapprochement, but though they came and went and though I lingered, there was no sign that I existed or was even visible to any of their eyes. No one wanted any part of me over there.
One day I saw Elthea in the A. & P. She was buying dog food for Honey. She caught my look, and I ducked around the cereal counter, hiding myself behind a pyramid of Quaker Oats boxes. I waited, wondering how I could get out without her seeing me again. Then, from the other side, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Taken by surprise, I whirled, and looked up into Elthea's face. My sudden movement caused the pyramid of boxes to come tumbling, and I knelt to retrieve them as they rolled around in the aisle. Elthea stooped and helped me.
"You ought to come back," she whispered, bringing her face close to mine. "Ought to talk to Jesse. Ought not to go treating him that way."
I dropped the Quaker Oats boxes and stood. She reached for my hand. I pulled away.
"You ought to. Otherwise, it may be too late, and you'll be sorry."
I ran from the store. When I looked back, Elthea was just standing there, watching me go.
* * *
The ultimate tragedy came late in the summer, just before school began. One afternoon, Lew, Harry, and I went to dig clay for a cliff-dwellers' model we intended building, the clay to be mixed with shredded paper and dry asbestos, a makeshift adobe which we would bake until hard.